We’ve covered before just how sketchy towing companies can be, from targeting specific groups of people to auctioning off vehicles of deployed service members. But imagine if someone went and created their own tow truck company for their own schemes. It’d be a lot worse. But that’s what one man might have done. The New York Daily Times reports a man was arrested for going around New York City and allegedly stealing and towing vehicles so he could sell them for scrap.
Franklin Payne was arrested by the NYPD on July 10. Authorities say Payne turned a Chevy Silverado into a tow truck so he could steal vehicles by towing them away. His grift was specific in that he was allegedly grabbing vehicles from East New York, Queens and Brooklyn, and he only seemed to target older Hondas, Nissans, VWs, Fords and Kias. There was a reason for this.
He always made sure the cars and SUVs he nabbed were more than eight years old so he wouldn’t have to provide the Long Island junkyard he towed them to with the vehicle’s title when selling it for scrap, police say.
Apparently, though, he was the architect of his own undoing. In an attempt to appear legitimate, he created a paper trail by filing paperwork with the DMV that these “junked” cars were owned by him. From there it was just a matter of the NYPD falling down a rabbit hole of scamming to track him down.
NYPD auto crime detectives routinely run the vehicle identification numbers of stolen cars in a national database to see if they were junked.
During one of these routine searches, cops learned several cars stolen in the East New York area within a three-month span were all crushed at the same Nassau County junkyard.
Digging deeper, cops checked the documentation on the scrapped vehicles filed with the state Department of Motor Vehicles, NYPD Sgt. Michael Alfano said.
“He signed a document establishing that he was the owner of the [cars] he delivered,” Alfano said of Payne. “That’s how we got his name.”
Surveillance video and meeting with the actual owners of the vehicles helped in arresting Payne. He was also a creature of habit, stealing many of the vehicles from the same area. Between February and May authorities say Payne stole and scrapped over a dozen vehicles. He’s now being charged with over a dozen counts of vehicle theft, possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.